Wednesday, May 21, 2014

YOU GUYS. Over at Written? Kitten!, every time you write one hundred words, YOU GET A PICTURE OF A KITTEN. (Thanks, S!)

Over at Teen Librarian Toolbox, I really like the post "Dear Media, Let me help you write that article on YA literature." It begins, "Recently, there have been a voluminous number of articles written about
YA literature. And they are mostly wrong. So if you are a member of the
press and given this assignment, I thought I would help you out a
little. But first, let me start by telling you why I am, in fact,
qualified to help you out. Credentials are important, something these
articles always seem to lack..." (Thanks, R!)

Friday, May 16, 2014

Rebecca Stead texted me this picture she took near a canal somewhere-or-other in Amsterdam (I have explained before about the sense of direction we both share) with the comment that it immediately struck her as a topless Graceling cover. Publishers: get on it.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Also, for them that's interested, the other day, to my astonishment, I wrote two and a half pages. Or, as I emailed to a particular group of interested friends, "tuna half pages." There are certain dictation errors that I encounter so frequently that at a certain point I give up correcting them and they enter our lexicon as a kind of code. My correspondents, who are usually not dictating, use them as much as I do. (And now I've remembered one of my favorite (of my own) blog posts, about dictation errors, angst, and Prufrock ^_^.)

Some recent words my Scrabble app has rejected: Bearthin. Adjective. The particular degree of thinness of a bear coming out of hibernation. Trocheey. Adjective. Adjectival form of "trochee." Meowlion. Noun. Really, isn't every lion a meowlion? Evebait. Noun. Perhaps a sexist synonym for "apple." Unshovel. Verb. Arguably if a walk is unshoveled, someone or something has unshoveled it. I would go so far as to say I've spent entire mornings unshoveling the walk. I did recently have the satisfaction of changing "otter" to "garotter," but I lament the lack of style points in Scrabble. I feel, and have always felt, that it should be more like figure skating, in which the technical and the artistic scores are combined. And you should be able to argue your opponents into accepting words that aren't really words but should be. That is the kind of Scrabble people play in heaven.

My sister, codename: Apocalyptica the Flimflammer, sent me the link to this really lovely video about a woman in Japan named Ayano Tsukimi who makes life-sized dolls of people in her village who have died or moved away, then sets them up around town.

Writing update: I continue to write at least one page a day of the new book. It continues to be awful. Last night, a friend asked me specifically what I meant by that, and with his help, I determined that (1) the book itself is awful, (2) the experience of writing the book is awful, and (3) awful things are happening to the people in the book. We did determine that the people themselves aren't awful. I guess that's something (though it does make it worse that awful things are happening to them). :)

Friday, May 2, 2014

An unexpected change in my weekend plans leaves me with some time this afternoon for blogging a bit of randutiae...

My dear friend Amanda MacGregor recently wrote a piece for Modern Loss about what happens when the experience of traumatic loss collides with the way we use social media. She writes that following the sudden death of her father, "Thanks to social media, his death was old news by the time I found out about it." This piece brings up some questions it would benefit us to think about – like, what is lost when a person who's grieving doesn't even have the privilege of telling their own bad news? Check it out.

If you've been around my blog for a while, you may remember that in times past I flew through the air with a touch of unease, the daring young lass on the flying trapeze. In case my mother is reading this, don't worry, Mom, this isn't a segue to the announcement that I'm on the flying trapeze again. My feet are firmly planted on the ground. However, my dear darling trapeze school, TSNY Beantown, currently situated in the Jordan's Furniture entertainment complex in Reading, is looking for a new home! Do you know of anyone in the greater Boston area who might have a suitable space for an indoor trapeze rig and an interest in supporting the aerialist arts? If so, please contact Christine De Souza or Hailey Dodge at TSNY Beantown, 781-942-7800 or bostoffice@trapezeschool.com. TSNY Beantown provides something extraordinary and unique.

My time is up so that's it for today, but here's what I'm looking at on my desk these days:

Quick Links

"Then, at last, sitting on her stretcher-bed, she took from the very bottom of her pack an old peacock-blue scarf folded around a heavy, square book. She unwrapped it and opened it very carefully, as if guilty secrets might fall from between its pages like pressed flowers. This was Harry's secret. She was a writer."

-from The Tricksters, by Margaret Mahy

Writing is my secret. Every day I unwrap and open it as carefully as I can. Welcome to my blog about writing and life! Above you'll find quick links about me and my books, and below is more about me, ways to subscribe, and an archive of past posts. Click here to go home to my most recent posts.

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About the Author

Kristin Cashore wrote the New York Times bestsellers Graceling, Fire, and Bitterblue, all of which have been named ALA Best Books for Young Adults. Her next book, Jane, Unlimited, comes out in September 2017. Graceling is the winner of the 2009 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature and Fire is the winner of the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award. The books are world travelers, currently scheduled to be published in thirty-four languages.

Finally, a note: This blog is my only online presence. I am not on Facebook, Google+, or any other social media sites, and I use Twitter solely as an amalgamation feed for my blog. Sorry, but I do not read @-replies on Twitter!